Cesira (left) emigrated to California with her husband when she was 25. The couple are still tied to Ticino traditions and have always spoken their Italian dialect with their children. Their son Artur never misses an opportunity to play the accordion and sing traditional songs with his mother.

Watsonville, Monterey Bay, 2015.

A sign of the Ticino times, here in Soledad, 2015.

John Grisetti Junior and Mary Ann Van Paul, Soledad, 2015. They are the children of John Grisetti, who was born in Ticino's Valle Morobbia in 1909 and who set off for California when he was only 18. He taught his Ticino dialect to his children, which they still speak today.

Pat and Betty, the grandchildren of Tony Canonica, in Butte, Montana, 2013. Canonica settled in Nevada when he was 16 before moving to Montana in the late 19th century. He was one of the first sheet metal workers in the west. He eventually opened a shop selling home fixtures and crockery.

Anne, Maria and Michaela Calanchini in San Francisco, 2015. Their great-grandparents emigrated from the village of Cevio in the Vallemaggia around 1880 and opened a dairy in California. A century later - in 1985 - the Calanchini family decided to travel to Ticino to rediscover their roots.

A view of San Francisco bay, 2015.

Scott Lafranchi in his dairy in Nicasio, 2013. His grandfather left the village of Maggia in 1910 when he was 17. Once in California, he married another Ticino emigrant and they opened a dairy. Their descendants still run it today and produce a traditional Ticino cheese, among others.

Frank Stagi lives with his wife, two children and mother in Santa Cruz. His grandfather emigrated from Biasca in 1932. He went to Davenport where he was employed as a farm hand.

Santa Cruz

Lee and Anna Conti in Sonoma, 2013. Lee's father came from Val Lavizzara and emigrated last century. Anna was born and raised in Ticino, where she met Lee while he was on holiday there.

"The animals are like my children," says Brian Rianda in Chualar in the Salinas Valley (2015). Brian is the grandson of Steve Rianda who began his life in California as a farmer in Watsonville.

Salinas Valley

This content was published on March 12, 2016 11:00 AMMar 12, 2016 - 11:00

Tens of thousands of people left canton Ticino at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century for a better life in the United States. The photographer Flavia Leuenberger managed to track down some of their descendants, some of whom still speak dialect or hoist the Swiss flag on August 1, Swiss National Day.

The project began with simple letters. Leuenberger said she was moved when she read the tales of Ticinese emigrants in California, published by the historian Giorgio Cheda in the 1980s. She then decided to try to track them down.

This wasn’t easy, given the distance and the lack of information. “I made a list of surnames mentioned in Cheda’s books and other documents and tried to find them in phone books in the US. I sent at least 60 letters, but only a few replied,” said the 31-year-old winner of the Swiss Press Photo 2015 in the portrait category.

But most of the people whom Leuenberger did meet had strong ties to Ticino, starting with the language. “It’s bizarre hearing them speak with a dialect from the valleys but with an English accent,” she told swissinfo.ch.

It’s estimated that between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century some 27,000 people left Ticino for California alone, to work as cow milkers or ranchers. Many then became landowners, as Leuenberger’s photographs show.